Education in Ancient India c8.s4.12

c8.s4.12

Erroneous Impression about Cramming : The fact that the modern Vedic Pandit does not know the meaning of the hymns he recites with flawless accuracy, has led to an erroneous impression that mere cramming was encouraged by the ancient Indian educational system. Such however was not the case. We have already shown how for many centuries even Vedic scholars could expound the meaning of the hymns they had committed to memory; it was owing to the growth of the Vedic literature and the imperative necessity of committing the whole of it to memory, that it was reluctantly decided to assign the memorising of the Vedic texts to one section of Brahmanas and their exposition to another. It had become humanly impossible to expect both the tasks to be done by the same individual.